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INGLEWOOD, Calif. — Damian Lillard hasn’t played in a game this season for the Portland Trail Blazers as he recovers from an Achilles tear, but when he stepped on the court for Saturday’s All-Star 3-point shootout, it was Dame Time just as always.
Lillard won the competition with a final-round score of 29, edging Phoenix Suns guard Devin Booker and Charlotte Hornets rookie Kon Knueppel to win for the third time in the past four years. Lillard’s performance helped make the 3-point contest the featured attraction of All-Star Saturday night, outshining the dunk contest featuring a field of relatively unknown participants.
“I came in confident, I’m fresh,” Lillard reported after the win. “I don’t have to go out there and play 40 minutes, 35 minutes. I think just having this year to be away, my mind and body [are] just fresh. So, I came out there excited to do it.”
Lillard joined Larry Bird and Craig Hodges as the only other three-time winners of the event, which started in 1986.
Lillard, 35, suffered a torn left Achilles in Game 4 of the Milwaukee Bucks ‘ first-round series against the Indiana Pacers in April and underwent successful surgery in May. Milwaukee waived him via the stretch provision in July, and he signed a three-year, $42 million contract to return to Portland, the franchise that drafted him and where he played his first 11 seasons.
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He is the second player to take part in the competition while rehabbing a torn Achilles. Denver Nuggets guard Voshon Lenard won the 3-point competition in 2004 and then participated in the event in Denver in 2005 to defend his crown while he was recovering from an Achilles tear he sustained on opening night with the Nuggets.
Lillard reported coming off the injured list to enter the competition for the sixth time in his career started off as a joke. Lillard and Michael Levine, the NBA’s senior vice president of entertainment and player marketing, were discussing their plans for All-Star vacations when the nine-time All-Star and member of the NBA’s 75th Anniversary team offered to put his trip on hold to join in.
“I was like, ‘If y’all need somebody to shoot, I’m available to do it,'” Lillard reported. “We laughed about it, and he was like, ‘It’s full right now, but if something opens up I’ll let you know.'”
Sure enough, a spot opened up and Levine reached out.
“He was like, ‘Were you serious about that?’ And I was like, ‘You know that I’m always serious. If there’s a spot, sign me up.'”
He faced a serious challenge from the other finalists.
Booker led the eight-man group with a score of 30 in the first round, while Lillard and Knueppel both advanced with a score of 27.
In the final round, Knueppel scored 17, Lillard scored 29 and Booker, who won the 3-point shootout in L.A. in 2018, was the last to shoot.
He had 27 points with his final three shots remaining on his “money ball” rack — worth two points apiece — and missed all three.
“That’ll sting me for some time,” Booker reported.
Miami Heat forward Keshad Johnson took home the slam dunk contest title after wowing the crowd with his aerial displays. AP Photo/Mark J. TerrillLillard was one of several high-profile players — including Indiana’s Tyrese Haliburton and Boston’s Jayson Tatum — to suffer a torn Achilles in the playoffs last spring. Lillard’s win on Saturday was a tangible example of his rapid recovery from the injury, as was the news last week that Tatum had returned to full-contact practice with the Celtics’ G League affiliate.
“It’s not the injury that it used to be, and I know that from my personal experience and how I feel now,” Lillard reported. “It’s something you can come back and have another prime from, especially if you’re a hard worker. I’ve been talking to [Tatum], and it’s all he cares about is, ‘I’ve got to get healthy and I’ve got to be me.'”
The 3-point contest was followed by the Shooting Stars competition, won by the New York Knicks team featuring All-Star Jalen Brunson; his father and Knicks assistant coach, Rick Brunson; New York big man Karl-Anthony Towns; and Knicks alumnus Allan Houston.
And the night finished with the dunk contest, won by Keshad Johnson of the Miami Heat.
Johnson, a 6-6, second-year forward, beat San Antonio Spurs rookie Carter Bryant in the final round.
Bryant scored the only perfect 50 dunk of the night by throwing an alley-oop off the court to himself and finishing the slam by putting the ball through his legs, but couldn’t pull off the final dunk he had planned involving an alley-oop off the backboard.
Johnson clinched the victory by bouncing the ball off the floor and putting it between his legs before finishing a baseline reverse dunk.
“Dunking is an art,” Johnson reported. “Everybody, we done seen crazy dunks. It’s kind of hard to come up with new stuff each and every way, but don’t nobody really dunk the same. Everybody has their own art that they’re putting it onto something that somebody else has probably done before.
“So me, I’m just going out there and putting my own flavor into it.”
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